RIC 2026 Engaged Scholarship Award Winner (Master’s Category): Nwabuisi Chibudo Joshua

About the Project

As climate change increasingly threatens food systems around the world, responses often focus on new technologies, improved crop varieties, and policy interventions. While these approaches are important, they can overlook a critical source of resilience: the knowledge and practices that communities have developed and sustained over generations.

Our research project, titled “Traditional Root Crops and Climate Resilience: A Photovoice Exploration of Tremembé (Brazil) and Igbo (Nigeria) Food Sovereignty through Traditional Food Festivals,” explored how traditional food festivals contribute to food sovereignty and climate resilience through the preservation of cultural knowledge. The project focused on two festivals: the Igbo Iri-ji Ọhụrụ (New Yam Festival) in Nigeria and the Tremembé Festa de Farinhada (Cassava Flour-Making Festival) in Brazil.

My interest in this project emerged from a desire to better understand how communities sustain their food systems in the face of environmental and social change. During a seminar by http://www.thetestlab.ca/ Mateus Tremembé, a youth leader from the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú community in Brazil, I had the opportunity to hear him share his community’s experiences of adapting local food systems to changing climatic conditions. His presentation highlighted the important role that traditional food practices play in supporting community resilience and sparked my interest in understanding how communities sustain their food systems while navigating environmental challenges. As I listened, I was struck by how familiar many of the Tremembé experiences felt. Although the Tremembé live thousands of kilometres from my Igbo community in southeastern Nigeria, I recognized shared connections to traditional root crops, cultural traditions, and community food systems. After the presentation, I approached Mateus to discuss these similarities. Our conversation revealed a common interest in how traditional crops and cultural practices support food sovereignty and resilience. What began as a brief exchange soon evolved into a collaborative research project connecting the Tremembé in Brazil and the Igbo in Nigeria through their shared efforts to preserve traditional food systems in a changing world.

For both communities, yam and cassava are much more than staple foods. They are connected to cultural identity, livelihoods, collective memory, and community well-being. Yet climate change, industrial development, changing land-use patterns, youth migration, and the expansion of globalized food systems are creating new challenges for both traditional agriculture and the knowledge systems that sustain it.

Working with Community Partners:

This project was built on the principles of community-engaged scholarship. Rather than conducting research “on” these communities, I worked alongside community members to co-create knowledge that reflected their priorities, experiences, and perspectives. The project engaged 34 participants across the Tremembé and Igbo communities, including farmers, elders, youth, cultural leaders, and knowledge holders. Community members helped shape conversations, shared their experiences, supported the interpretation findings, and participated in knowledge-sharing activities throughout the project.

Partnerships were central to this work. In Nigeria, collaboration with the National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike, and local facilitators – Samuel Ilogu, Daniel Ahamefula, Dr.

Samuel Onwuka, and Ikechukwu Emezuo supported community engagement and facilitated access to the study area. In Brazil, this project was a collaboration with the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú community and the Association for Co-produced Local Development (ADLECO). This project would not have been possible without the support of Lauriane Tremembé, a young Tremembé leader whose dedication was instrumental to the research. As the local facilitator for the Tremembé study, she coordinated participant recruitment, conducted interviews in Portuguese, and helped build meaningful connections with community members. Her knowledge, guidance, and commitment ensured that the voices and experiences of the Tremembé community remained at the heart of this project.

Learning Through Photography and Storytelling

To explore community experiences, the project used Photovoice and photo-elicitation interviews, a participatory visual method where research participants document, reflect on, and share their own realities through photography. Participants photographed aspects of their lives that reflected the importance of traditional root crops, cultural celebrations, food preparation practices, environmental change, and community life. During follow-up interviews, they shared the stories and meanings behind their photographs. What emerged was much more than a collection of images. The photographs became a starting point for conversations about food sovereignty, climate adaptation, cultural identity, and the transmission of knowledge across generations. Farmers noted environmental changes affecting agricultural production. Elders shared knowledge about traditional farming and food practices. Youth reflected on the importance of maintaining connections to their cultural heritage. Through photography and storytelling, community members became active contributors to the research and to the knowledge generated through it.

Knowledge Sharing Beyond the Research

A central goal of this project was to ensure that knowledge did not remain within academic publications. Throughout the project, community meetings with the local facilitators created opportunities for participants to discuss or reflects on the outcome. One of the most meaningful outcomes was the co-creation of two interactive StoryMaps, one with the Tremembé community, another StoryMap for the Igbo community. The StoryMaps bring together participant photographs, narratives, and research findings in accessible digital formats that can be used by community members, educators, researchers, and future generations. The StoryMaps were designed not only as research outputs but also as community resources. They provide spaces where stories, cultural practices, and agricultural knowledge can be preserved and shared, helping to strengthen intergenerational learning and cultural continuity.

Community feedback highlighted the value of this approach. As one community member reflected, “I believe that the achievements we have reached are the result of a collective effort grounded in mutual respect, trust, reciprocity, and a shared commitment to more just and inclusive ways of producing knowledge. Participating in this process alongside you has been a deeply enriching experience, marked by knowledge exchange, shared learning, and the strengthening of relationships that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries” This reflection underscores the value of participatory and community-engaged research,

emphasizing the importance of reciprocal relationships, co-learning, and the co-production of knowledge. Such feedback reinforced the importance of returning research findings to communities in ways that are accessible, meaningful, and actionable, ensuring that knowledge generated through the research process remains relevant and useful to those who contributed to its creation.

What We Learned

The project revealed that traditional food festivals are far more than cultural celebrations. They are important spaces where agricultural knowledge is shared, traditional food practices are maintained, and community relationships with land, food, and culture are strengthened.

The findings also demonstrate that climate resilience is not built through technology. Communities draw upon generations of experience, knowledge, and cultural practices to respond to environmental change. Traditional food festivals provide opportunities to sustain and mobilize this knowledge while reinforcing food sovereignty and community well-being. By connecting experiences from Brazil and Nigeria, the project highlighted shared challenges and locally grounded solutions emerging across communities in the Global South. It also demonstrated the value of community-engaged research in creating knowledge that is both academically meaningful and directly relevant to the people whose experiences shape it.

Looking Ahead

This project would not have been possible without the collaboration and generosity of the Tremembé and Igbo community members and facilitators who shared their time, stories, photographs, and knowledge. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn alongside them.

The most important outcome of this work is not simply the research itself, but the relationships, conversations, and knowledge-sharing pathways that emerged through the process. As the StoryMaps continue to serve as resources for community learning and cultural preservation, I hope the project contributes to ongoing efforts to strengthen food sovereignty, support intergenerational knowledge transmission, and highlight the important role that Indigenous and traditional food systems play in building resilient futures.

About the Award Recipient